Category: Murders And Crime

Posted on

Private Investigators Share the Weirdest Cases They’ve Ever Worked On

For a lot of people, zany detective cases are the stuff of TV shows and movies, not reality. But when you work as a private investigator, real life truly is stranger than fiction.

On two AskReddit threads, people who have worked in the PI field shared some of the craziest stories from work — at least, the craziest ones they can talk about.

1. He faked his own death.

“I’m a paralegal who investigates backgrounds of witnesses for our cases. I found someone who was pretending to be someone else who died as a kid. My boss alerted the feds and they investigated and found out he had faked his death 20 years before to avoid a embezzlement trial. He got convicted for the false identity because he filed taxes in the fake name. Not sure about the original embezzlement charge.

He was a witness in a financial case involving the SEC, btw.”

2. The energy drink bandit.

“I’ve been a P.I. for about 3 years – mostly for disability fraud, no cheating wives or anything. Coolest/strangest thing I observed was a low level criminal (who was supposed to be disabled), who would spend all day going from Walmart to Walmart.

In each Walmart, he would fill the shopping cart full to the brim with energy drinks (Monster I think), walk briskly out the door without paying, throw them in his trunk, and take off like a bat out of hell.

At the end of the day he sold a trunk-load of energy drinks to a corner store and I video taped him walking out with a wad of cash.

Definitely not as exciting as the movies, but it was a fun day for me.”

3. He thought his neighbor was invisible.

“Guy calls me to help catch his neighbor who is knocking over his trashcans at night. We set up a small night vision camera to catch the guy. Watch the video the next day – it is the wind. The client freaks out, says that his neighbor could have had an invisibility field or could have been moving too fast (like the Flash) to show up on camera. Wants to pay us thousands of dollars to rent a heat-seeking camera or one that can shoot thousands of frames per second… Turns out lots of crazy people call PIs to investigate the TV controlling them, alien abduction, etc.”

4. Went looking for a cat, found a drug operation.

“Last year (I was 17) I pretended to be a private investigator just for fun and my neighbour gave me a tenner to go look for his missing cat, I guess he just wanted me to have some fun and I was just fooling around and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find anything.

But damn did I find something.

At the bottom of my street there was an old abandoned retirement home, closed a couple years after I moved in. I went there first and found a blood trail leading into the place, there wasn’t a lot of blood but just enough that it could have been the cat’s blood.

Case in point, the building was being used by some druggies that were hiding their operation, just some weed, meth and coke and a couple of guns. After seeing that I shat myself because I was only going in to the whole PI thing as a joke.

I anonymously tipped off the police who raided the place, apperantly one of the guys accidently attacked the cat who started to wail loudly and he was scared people would come to investigate, he couldn’t bring himself to kill the cat so he dragged it inside and forgot to clean the blood away.

It was one of the most thrilling, yet terrifying things that I had ever gotten myself into. But hey, at least the cat lived and my neighbour got her back!”

5. A twisted rich man’s mansion.

“I don’t have my license but I work in a PI office. I’m the only administrative staff member. It’s basically me and my Vietnam Vet boss in a Ron Swanson-April Ludgate kind of situation. A story he told me recently comes to mind.

He and his partner were once hired to sweep a house and look for any valuables. They agreed to the case before knowing the full extent of the damage to the home because the lawyers were willing to pay well and our caseload was small at the time.

The home was owned by a man who inherited a large fortune because his father had invested in a little movie that went on to become one of the biggest horror franchises of all time. The son never worked a day in his life. He had a big mansion out in the boonies. No one ever saw him or his wife because they spent all of their time inside.

The home was now empty because he went nuts and murdered his wife and their dog. He was serving life in prison and the family’s estate needed the home cleared.

When my boss and his partner got in there they realized how bad it was. For years this guy and his wife had been shooting up drugs in the house. Every square inch of the mansion was covered in trash. After binging on drugs and alcohol the two would puke and then just cover the vomit with trash and leave it there. The same went for the dog shit and piss. This went on for years. In addition to the puke and animal waste there were needles littered through the trash. My boss had to buy hazmat suits to sweep the home and look for valuables. Apparently, there was a ton of diamond and gold jewelry just thrown right in with the filth.

At one point they found a table behind a door that was missed by the forensic crew completely covered in the wife’s blood from where he had mutilated the body.

They also found an entire room full of a many thousand dollar kiln and ceramics supplies, all untouched. I guess the guy decided he wanted to become a master potter before quickly abandoning that pursuit to become a fucking murderer.

They could only access the home through one exterior door that wasn’t blocked. When they eventually walked around the exterior of the home they found that the guy had purchased himself a shark cage. As in, he decided he wanted to become a shark photographer, and ignoring the fact that he didn’t live right on the ocean, BOUGHT a shark cage and stuck it in the yard. Eventually, people started to invade the grounds and steal stuff from the home and one day the shark cage just disappeared.

6. Cheating husbands and coaches.

“P.I. for 5 year, I had a few exciting, not necessarily strange cases. One incident was of a coach who was sleeping with one of the female players. One of the players that was benched hired me to document the coach for sleeping with one of the starters on the team…They were careful with how they arranged their meetings, and took me a bit to document it, but ultimately got the information.

Fast forward a week later and the papers reporting the coach has resigned to work in the family business…fast forward another week later, the story broke with all the evidence I had collected (I was not named in the story as I had requested not to be.) Another case was my quickest (2 hours). Picked up surveillance after the subject had dinner with his wife at Applebee’s, followed to a hospital parking garage and he went in to visit his mother. I stayed to monitor the vehicle, and another shows up.

The subject exited the hospital and jumped in the other vehicle…I then recorded him getting a bj. Case opened and closed in 2 hours (paid $1,000 retainer, was able to keep all $1,000 since retainers are non refundable I charged $60/hr and would’ve only made $120)….I have many many more stories….some funny, some really sad (I specialized in father’s rights cases).”

7. The subject died immediately.

“Not me personally, but I worked with a guy whose subject died on the first day of surveillance. Drug overdose. I’m sure the final report must have been legendary. “The claimant died.””

8. He snorted coke out of where?!

“My personal favorite case was this one wherein a guy with a video-game esque last name (akin to Gannon) had a criminal record against him. The record indicated that he had been charged with cocaine usage and that he had reportedly snorted the cocaine out of a Hooker’s a*s.”

9. Some people are just in denial.

“Get hired by a wife to see if her husband is sleeping with his secretary. We follow them, recording them going into his single-bed hotel room at 10:20pm after a nice dinner and leaving together the next morning at 8am. She says it proves nothing, that they could have just been working late…”

10. No tattoo is safe.

“I had one hired against me, and they found out everything. Tattoos that aren’t visible normally, the address I lived at in a different country, medical records from an accident that happened 6 years prior, so many random things that aren’t publicly available.”

The post Private Investigators Share the Weirdest Cases They’ve Ever Worked On appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

15 Creepy Mysteries That Might Never Be Solved

There are so many unsolved mysteries out there that it can be hard to keep up with them. Luckily, we have online forums where people fill us in on the creepy tales and stories we should read up on if we want to scare the sh*t out of each other.

Here are 15 scary unsolved mysteries that might never be solved. Click on the links in the titles to read more about these topics.

These answers come to us from the Buzzfeed Community.

1. The disappearance of Bobby Dunbar.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“I just find it crazy that we’ll never quite know if the kid who was returned to the Dunbars was really their son or the son of another woman who they won against in court. If that wasn’t Bobby, what happened to Bobby? And if it was Bobby, why did he seem so confused about it?”

2. The Somerton Man.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“The dude from Australia! The Somerton Man! He was found on the beach, dead. All signs pointed to poisoning but they didn’t find anything in the tox report. All the tags in his clothes were cut out, there was no way of identifying him. Then they found a line from a book in his pocket or something. They say he could have been a spy but we’ll probably never know.”

3. The Yuba County Five.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“Five young men went missing in California after seemingly being chased up a mountain in their car. Months later, four of their five bodies were found malnourished, but the fifth has never been found. People think since the men were mentally challenged they were targeted or that the 5th man murdered them, but that theory seems unlikely.”

4. The death of Rebecca Zahau.

“She was found bound and hanged naked off the balcony of her boyfriend’s beachside mansion. There was a mysterious message written in black paint on her bedroom door reading, “She saved him. Can you save her?”

5. The death of the Black Dahlia.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“This one is obviously super well known but the fact that no one knows who the killer is is wild and what was done to her was so brutal and creepy.”

6. The disappearance of Timmothy Pitzen.

“Everyone needs to read this case, it is nuts. Amy Fry-Pitzen checked her 6-year-old son out of school and three days later her body was found in a hotel where she had died of apparent suicide. A note was found next to her saying that Timmothy was safe with people who would care for him and he would never be found. They have never been able to find him, or any remains of him.”

7. Australia’s Mr. Cruel.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“Many people have seen the police sketch of the modified balaclava that he wore in one of the kidnappings (the one with white stitches to conceal any potential identifying markers — super creepy!), but his crime spree and its sudden stop is haunting. Its unsolved nature adds more to its overall creepiness.”

8. The 1962 Alcatraz prison break.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“Along with their friend Allen West, they planned to dig a hole using spoons into their cell walls and climb up the walls onto the roof. Using loads of raincoats they also planned to take all their belongings and make a raft and swim away. West never made it as his hole was too small, but the others have still not been found. There are many weird things involved in this story — someone claiming to be Clarence wrote a letter to the police a few years back stating he is alive and that he would tell them where he is if they didn’t arrest him and that the other two have died.”

9. The Lane Bryant murders.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“It happened on a Saturday morning in the southern suburbs of Chicago. A person walked into the store, held people hostage for a short time, and murdered everyone in there. The person got away and was never found. A manager, who wasn’t even scheduled to come in that day, called 911 and just said, ‘Lane Bryant, hurry.’ One person survived the shooting but the person has not been identified. They’re not even sure if the killer was a man or a woman. The 911 call is super chilling.”

10. The disappearance of Susy Tomassi.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Susy was 73 years old with slight dementia. She owned a restaurant called The Quilted Giraffe with her husband and was known for walking from the restaurant to other stores. One day, she was seen on camera walking away from her restaurant and literally just vanished. Nobody knows what happened. They recently released a video of a person they believe to be Susy, walking through some store alleys and getting into a white pickup truck the exact time she went missing.”

11. The death of Gareth Williams.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“The spy in the duffel bag. His naked remains were found in a duffel bag, padlocked from the outside, in the bath of a safe house. No forensic evidence was found that pointed towards it being an accident, and the key to the padlock was found underneath his body. The official cause of death was ‘probably an accident’ but a KGB agent claims he was killed by the Russian SVR.”

12. The fate of the Sodder children.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“The whole case is quite the rabbit hole with so many lies and cover-ups and unanswered questions. Someone out there has answers! It’s been over 70 years, so if the children survived, they’ve probably passed on now. But I’m still so curious about what happened!”

13. The incident at Dyatlov Pass.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“Nine experienced trekkers were found dead. There was no sign of foul play, but most of them were missing clothes, some of them had extreme injuries, and the tents were ripped open from the inside. It happened over 50 years ago and to this day is still unsolved!”

14. The death of JonBenét Ramsey.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“ARE WE EVER GOING TO FIND OUT WHO DID IT?! Did the mom write the ransom? Why was the random note written at the house? Why did JonBenét have pineapple in her stomach? Who gave her the pineapple? How did the DNA on her clothing get there, who does the DNA belong to? Was she being abused? WHY DOES HER BROTHER SOUND SO CREEPY AND WHY DOES HE SMILE SO MUCH?! Someone in that family is guilty of something. Darnit! It still keeps me up at night.”

15. The disappearance of Amy Bradley.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

“She disappeared on a cruise ship and there were rumors that she was trafficked. They found a photo of a really similar looking woman on an escort site!”

The post 15 Creepy Mysteries That Might Never Be Solved appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

15 People Share Their Small Town’s Most Recent Scandals

I lived in a small town until I was 10 years old when my family moved away, and I remember that everyone there seemed to know everyone else’s business.

Because that’s how it works in small towns. A lot of gossip, a lot of drama – and when a scandal hits, everyone knows about it.

Here are the latest small town scandals according to AskReddit users.

1. A criminal from the big city.

“A few days ago, Amber Alert sent out an emergency message about a fellow in a green car who had stabbed his girlfriend and stolen their baby out of San Jose, which is 3 hours north of us. Lo and behold, the guy was caught right at our own downtown gas station when the kidnapper accidently locked the baby and his keys in his car, which drew attention to him.

A good samaritan from an entirely different town, (a tourist), put the puzzle together, and put the guy in a headlock until the authorities arrived.”

2. On the loose.

“My small town includes a pretty large zoo and a tapir has recently escaped and is still at large.”

3. Holy sh*t.

“The school gym teacher was fired after being caught masturbating in the equipment room (he was caught by two students). A few days later he killed himself. Everyone is a bit shaken up about it.”

4. He seems really smart.

“A substitute teacher at the high school started smoking a joint in class in front of students.”

5. An epidemic.

“Terrible heroin epidemic. Brother’s best friend who was fairly close to our family overdosed a few days ago. My brother only has maybe 2 childhood friends left because of this.”

6. Damn kids…

“We don’t know who but someone has been going around egging random cars and throwing full water bottles at people’s windshields…”

7. That’s pretty bad.

“Our newly elected mayor (who is a school teacher as well) caused a head-on car crash injuring 2 small children in the other car. She was found to be drunk and it was 330 pm on a weekday. The kicker: she wasn’t charged with a crime (as of yet) but she did resign after “considerable thought.””

8. Meth lab?

“A vacant house exploded and no one is sure what caused it.”

9. Naked bandits.

“My grandparents small town has had a recent outbreak of teenagers riding horses through the middle of downtown, while wearing nothing but facemasks. It has happened a total of three times now, always different kids, always different horses.”

10. This is amazing.

“I left my small town years ago but I was home over thanksgiving and got an earful.

The local grocery store was renovated/expanded after 30 years and now “everything’s moved and you can’t find nothing”.

I was home for four days and literally every new social interaction with people in town involved the goddam grocery store and how awful it is now.

Spoiler: it actually looks quite nice and they hang signs over the aisles telling you where things are. You know, like a grocery store.”

11. Banned!

“The guy thats been trolling our town’s community Facebook page finally got banned. LOL.”

12. Oh My God.

“Not really recent, but the owner of the petting zoo turned out to be a serial murderer and buried 2 corpses under the goat enclosure. A lot of kids volunteer there and walked over them unknowingly. He murdered the couple, and used their house, car and money.”

13. Always the same.

“The scandal in my town is always the same… Someone is sleeping with someone else’s husband… Or the 50 year old dating the 18 year old…”

14. Kissin’ cousins.

“Two cousins just got married. The families all knew when they started dating and didn’t say a word until they were in a committed relationship. They went ahead with it. Wasn’t even very distant.”

15. Not a big fan.

“A married resource officer (aka cop that’s at the school all day) messed around with a married teacher. Both had kids, the teacher was fired, and the cop was pulled off of that duty. Nothing that interesting in its own, but it’s been the talk of the town for about a month.

This is the same town where everyone stares at you if they don’t recognize you. Dealt with that the first 2-3 years I lived here, just constant fucking staredowns lol. Population is less than 700.

I hate small towns.”

The post 15 People Share Their Small Town’s Most Recent Scandals appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A 62-Year-Old Man Is Currently 38 Years Into a Life Sentence He Received After Stealing $9

A man’s story of spending 38 years in prison is the perfect illustration of just how unfair the U.S. criminal justice system can be sometimes.

Willie Simmons of Enterprise, Alabama, was sentenced to life without parole in 1982 — for stealing $9. He had three prior convictions at the time, so he was prosecuted under Alabama’s Habitual Offender Act, passed in 1977 to crack down on repeat criminals. The prison population has skyrocketed by 840 percent since that law was passed, from 3,455 to over 30,000 prisoners.

Willie was only 25 at the time of his life-changing arrest. Why did he take the money? He was high on drugs and “trying to get me a quick fix.” His trial lasted all of 25 minutes, with no witnesses called and no plea deal offered.

He’s now at Holman, one of the most notoriously violent prisons in the country. Incredibly, he got sober 18 years ago, despite the prison being absolutely filled with drugs and drug use.

Investigative journalist Beth Shelburne shared Willie’s story on Twitter recently.

“Mr. Simmons was 25 when the state said he should die in prison,” Beth wrote. “Today he’s 62. When I asked his age he paused &  laughed. ‘Been so long since somebody asked me that,’ he said. He hasn’t had a visitor since 2005 after his sister died. ‘Haven’t heard from nobody since then.’”

Beth added that Willie is studying for his GED. He “tries to stay away from the wild bunch,” he says. He hasn’t gotten a disciplinary citation in 10 years.

“My hope is to get out of here, settle down with a woman and do God’s will,” he told Beth. “I’d like to tell people about how bad drugs are.”

But after filing appeal after appeal, Willie still has no end in sight. With no lawyer, every one of his appeals has been denied. And in 2014, Beth says, lawmakers removed the last avenue of appeal for “habitual offenders” like Willie. Still, he says: “I ain’t giving up.”

Beth shared the story to demonstrate why Alabama’s habitual offender law “needs to go.”

What do you think? Does it need to go?

The post A 62-Year-Old Man Is Currently 38 Years Into a Life Sentence He Received After Stealing $9 appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Dentist Was Prosecuted for Extracting a Patient’s Tooth While Riding a Hoverboard

Going to the dentist can be an ordeal, but it helps if you truly trust your dentist to take care of you while you’re in that chair.

One dentist is being prosecuted for betraying that trust – by riding a frickin’ hoverboard during an operation. I mean, what??

Seth Lookhart, a dentist in Alaska, extracted a patient’s tooth while standing on a hoverboard – but don’t just take our word for it. He captured the whole thing on video.

After successfully finishing the extraction, Seth pulled off his gloves, hoverboarded down the hall, and threw his hands in the air victoriously.

Seth sent the video to his friends and family. Three years later, it’s being used as evidence in a criminal case against him.

Seth is facing 43 charges. Aside from the hoverboard operation (which I just cannot get over), he is also being charged with various financial crimes, including a scheme to defraud Alaska Medicaid of $10,000 and diverting over $25,000 from Alaska Dental Arts.

Seth pleaded not guilty to all counts. His defense attorney says that, while he definitely did something wrong, he didn’t commit a crime.

But…this seems illegal. And if it’s not, it should be:

“Should he lose his dental license for a period of time, for forever? Is it a crime?” attorney Paul Stockler told CNN. “He’s not the first person to do something idiotic. I’ve seen things a lot worse and nobody’s ever had criminal charges filed against them. As the law is written, I don’t believe that’s a crime.”

Seth’s patient is not the one who pressed charges. Because she was sedated, she wasn’t even aware of the hoverboard until charges were already pressed and the state of Alaska asked her to confirm that it was her in the video.

The post A Dentist Was Prosecuted for Extracting a Patient’s Tooth While Riding a Hoverboard appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Feral Hogs Destroyed Thousands of Dollars Worth of Cocaine in the Italian Forest

In very strange news, a bunch of feral hogs destroyed $22,000 worth of cocaine in the forest in Italy.

The cocaine had been stashed in the woods by a local gang, consisting of three Albanians and an Italian. Police discovered the operation by wiretapping members of the gang. That’s where they heard someone complaining about the havoc wreaked by the wild hogs.

Officials don’t know exactly how many boars were involved, but they allegedly dug up the package and destroyed it, dispersing it throughout the woods.

In the end, the men lost much more than thousands of dollars worth of cocaine. Thanks to the bust, four suspects were arrested on drug charges. Two of them are now in jail, and two are under house arrest.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, the story is reminding users of the viral “30-50 feral hogs” tweet from August.

“So that’s where the 30-50 feral hogs got off to,” one user remarked.

“It’s the coke that makes them impervious to AR-15 fire,” another added.

Others joked that “this is what they’re up to when they’re not rushing that one dude’s son.” Or, it could be the cocaine that causes the daily attacks.

On a serious note, feral hogs are a major problem in Italy (as well as many places around the world). Farmers recently protested in Rome, calling for the government to control the population. There are about two million wild boars in Italy, and they can cause land damage and road accidents.

But they are also very tasty, so…don’t get rid of all of them.

The post Feral Hogs Destroyed Thousands of Dollars Worth of Cocaine in the Italian Forest appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

Learn About 5 of the Most Notorious Criminals of the past 50 Years

It’s hard to definitively come up with the most notorious American criminals from the past 50 years, but these men and women absolutely belong in the conversation. Each and every one of these killers was responsible for the murders of multiple innocent people, and their names alone still bring up images of death and mayhem.

This list is not complete by any means, but there is no denying that these five criminals shocked and terrified millions of Americans – and people around the world – with their wicked deeds.

1. John Wayne Gacy

Notoroius serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed 25 years ago today.

Posted by Investigation Discovery on Friday, May 10, 2019

In the annals of American serial killers, John Wayne Gacy remains one of the most terrifying. Gacy worked as a contractor in the Chicago area, and he was active in local politics. He also entertained area children by dressing as a character he called “Pogo the Clown.”

Little did friends, family, and neighbors know that, underneath his normal facade, Gacy was a serial killer who preyed on boys and young men. After murdering his victims, Gacy buried many of them in the crawlspace under his home.

He was finally arrested in December 1978 and was eventually convicted of an astounding 33 murders. Gacy was executed by lethal injection in Illinois in 1994 when he was 52 years old.

2. Aileen Wuornos 

Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Posted by Investigation Discovery on Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Aileen Wuornos‘ life story is one of remarkable tragedy almost from the very beginning. She was born to teenage parents in 1956. Soon after, her mother abandoned her, and her father, whom she never met, hanged himself in a prison cell when Wuornos was 12. She ended up being raised by her grandparents, but that was no better; she suffered from sexual abuse from a young age, becoming pregnant at the age of 14.

Wuornos began working as a prostitute when she was only 15, and this twisted her towards a lifetime of depravity. In 1989, after spending some time drifting and some time in jail, Wuornos committed her first murder. Before her capture in a Florida bar in 1991, Aileen Wuornos murdered an additional six men, later claiming that she killed them in self-defense.

Wuornos was convicted and was executed by lethal injection in Florida in 2002, marking the end of a tragic life filled with hatred and violence.

3. Jeffrey Dahmer

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was finally caught on this day in 1991.

Posted by Investigation Discovery on Monday, July 22, 2019

The name Dahmer is synonymous with evil, and there are many reasons why; in fact, there are exactly 16 reasons. That is the number of men that Jeffrey Dahmer killed during a murder spree that lasted from 1987 until his capture in 1991. Dahmer also killed a man in 1978 when he was only 18 years old.

Dahmer lived in an apartment building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and that apartment – #213 – became a torture chamber for the men who crossed its threshold. Dahmer picked up many of his victims at gay bars and lured them back to his apartment, where he then murdered them, dismembered their bodies, and – in some cases – ate their body parts.

Dahmer’s neighbors complained of foul smells and loud noises coming from apartment 213. They even heard chainsaws running on occasion. On July 22, 1991, Dahmer’s horrific life as a free man came to an end when he was arrested after a victim managed to escape Dahmer’s apartment before being killed. Arresting officers found a literal house of horrors, filled with severed heads, human hearts, and other body parts and bones.

Dahmer confessed and was sentenced to life in prison. In November 1994, Dahmer, then 34 years old, was beaten to death in a Wisconsin prison by another inmate.

4. Dennis Rader

BTK's Daughter Kerri Rawson Speaks Out

Imagine what it's like to learn your father is a notorious serial killer. Watch more without signing in ➡ https://id.network/BTKUntoldStories

Posted by Investigation Discovery on Thursday, September 26, 2019

Dennis Rader, also known as “BTK” (Bind, Torture, Kill) is one of the more perplexing serial killers in American history because he followed no specific patterns and some of his murders occurred years apart.

From 1974 until his eventual capture in 2005, Rader kept the citizens of Wichita, Kansas, and surrounding areas in complete terror with his murders and the taunting letters he sent to police and news outlets.

Rader murdered 10 people, including two children, between 1974 and 1991, and he remained a free man for another 14 years before he was captured. A minor slip-up proved to be his undoing: police were able to trace a floppy disk he sent them back to his church, which led to his arrest in February 2005. Rader confessed to his crimes and was sentenced to life behind bars.

Today, Dennis Rader is 74 years old, and he will spend the rest of his days behind bars in a maximum-security prison in Kansas.

5. Charles Manson

Charles Manson's name alone sends a chill down our spines.

Posted by Investigation Discovery on Thursday, May 9, 2019

The fact remains that Charles Manson never actually killed anyone (that we know of), but he was responsible for directing the murders of 7 people and one unborn child over the course of two terrifying nights in August 1969. The murders of Hollywood star Sharon Tate, her friends, and a separate middle-aged married couple shook Los Angeles to its core and captured the attention of the nation.

When the truth came out a few months later that a group of young hippies led by a charismatic ex-convict named Charles Manson was responsible for the murders, Americans were riveted.

A lengthy and dramatic trial ensued and Manson and several of his followers were put behind bars for life. After spending decades in prison in California, Charles Manson died in November 2017 at the age of 83.

 

Who else do you think belongs on the list of the most notorious American criminals of the past 50 years? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post Learn About 5 of the Most Notorious Criminals of the past 50 Years appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

This Man Studied Photography in Prison. He’s out Now and His Work Is Quite Impressive.

Every single person deserves a second chance in life, and Donato Di Camillo is definitely making the most of his opportunity.

Di Camillo found himself in and out of jail when he was younger, and he became very interested in photography when he was serving a sentence in a federal prison in Virginia. Di Camillo says, “I was always interested in magazines like National Geographic and LIFE. When I was a child I used to dream about being on adventures, exploring, always fascinated about other cultures in different parts of the world.”

He also said about his upbringing, “I was always interested. I was exposed to art early on. My uncle Dominic, he was an art director for many years before the computers took over. He was also a painter. He still is. He’s more like a Renaissance painter. We grew up in a four-tenement home, you know, so it was a close-knit family.”

Di Camillo was released from prison in 2012, and since then he’s dedicated himself to learning how to use a camera and to improving his art each and every day.

He takes a lot of wonderful photos of street scenes around New York, capturing a side of life that most people either ignore or tend to shy away from. He often focuses on people who are homeless and mentally ill.

Di Camillo says, “These people walk around, and they’re faceless. I feel that everybody deserves a face. I think we all relate to each other in one way or another, whether someone’s laying in the street or running a Fortune 500 company.”

Look for Di Camillo’s first book in 2020 and check out more of  his work on his Instagram page and his website.

Fantastic work.

The post This Man Studied Photography in Prison. He’s out Now and His Work Is Quite Impressive. appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

When the Pollen Count Goes Up, Violent Crime Goes Down

Much in the same way you feel like crap when allergies attack, it turns out criminals are less likely to go about their regular day when they’re not feeling up to snuff.

Image Credit: Pixabay

We know this because of a study recently published in the Journal of Health Economics, which found that when large cities experience a drop in violent crime, it typically happens while the pollen count is unusually high.

“Leveraging daily variation in local pollen counts in 16 US cities, we present novel evidence that violent crime declines by approximately 4% on days in which the local pollen count is unusually high. …While this might sound like a small behavioral response, it is on par with the change in crime that would be expected to accrue from a 10% increase in the size of a city’s police force.”

The researchers looked at crime levels in Chicago, Georgia, and New York, and while the results matched up when it came to violent crime – even domestic violence – property crimes did not seem to be affected.

Image Credit: Pixabay

It seems that if a plan to rob a house or a bank is already in progress, no one is going to cancel because they’re under the weather. Gotta pay the bills and all that.

“Given that the effects we observe are driven by a decline in a residential, mostly family violence, despite the fact that, if anything, there is more residential interaction on high pollen days, this is not merely a story about a change in opportunity or routine activities.”

It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it – even though people are more likely to be at home, where domestic violence typically occurs – these violent crimes are still less frequent.

“Violence responds to other situational factors which shift the costs and benefits of offending and precaution: malaise driven by pollen allergies.”

Image Credit: Pixabay

Basically, people may be too drowsy or unwell to commit crimes of passion.

The authors of the study believe that their findings show not just how crime is sensitive to allergens, but how it can be affected by changes to public health altogether.

“Our results do not show evidence of temporal displacement or state dependence, and hence the data are most consistent with the proportion that high pollen days prevent crime rather than delay it.”

So, people don’t “make up” for their drowsy, crime-free days by doing more crime afterward – the high allergy days actually seem to prevent crime.

I’m not sure how local law enforcement could take all of this into consideration, but I feel like they should be able to, don’t you?

Let’s figure it out together in the comments…

The post When the Pollen Count Goes Up, Violent Crime Goes Down appeared first on UberFacts.

Posted on

A Lawyer Took to Twitter to Reveal the Incredibly Sophisticated Scam He Just Barely Avoided

The people behind phishing scams are getting more cunning in their tactics to steal access to financial institutions and banks. This is not good because once they get in, they’ll suck accounts dry, leaving hard working people without money and facing an uphill battle to restore their stability.

Even individuals with advanced degrees and high-profile occupations,  like lawyers, can find themselves engaging with these crooks. And that’s step one to getting hoodwinked.

Recently, attorney Pieter Gunst showed how he was a target of a phishing scam—one he labeled “most credible.” So credible, in fact, that he almost fell for it, until he finally caught on that something strange was happening.

Gunst tells us the scam started with a caller from his bank needing to verify if he was using his card in Miami. After confirming he was not in Florida attempting to use his card, the caller tells him they will block the transaction. The caller asks for Gunst’s member number. He provides it since it can’t be used for account access.

Next, the caller tells Gunst he should have received a verification pin by text. He reads out the pin to the caller. Then, he and the rep go over other transactions under the pretense of verification.

 

A major red flag here. The caller asks for Gunst’s actual account PIN to block the account and generate a fraud alert if it’s used again. Gunst instantly knew something was wrong—to be clear, a bank will never ask for your PIN. That’s your secret. They just don’t need that information for anything.

He ended the call and notified his bank that something fishy was going on. He also reset all his passwords and pins.

Gunst realized the scammer had used his member number to reset his password. Once the scammer did that, they went over past transactions to establish credibility. But when the caller asked for his account pin, Gunst knew his bank would never ask him to repeat that kind of private information over the phone (or ever).

People on Twitter were surprised at how well thought out the scam seemed…until the very end. How many would’ve realized what was going before it was too late? I’m betting a lot of people would fall for this.

The lesson? Never give out any personal identification numbers to anyone who calls you, even if they sound legitimate. Because they aren’t—again, a bank won’t ask for that info.

Or, you could do what one guy said, claiming since he was a millennial he never answers his phone anyway. So, problem solved.

The post A Lawyer Took to Twitter to Reveal the Incredibly Sophisticated Scam He Just Barely Avoided appeared first on UberFacts.